My girlfriend has an Iphone 4, the non-S plain 4 one. As she uses the hell out of it and has had an Iphone from the very first one and loves it. I've been thinking about getting her the 5 as it supports LTE. She travels around our city for work and uses the internet on her phone a lot. My question is, "is it worth paying the price for it"? Is the speed bump between 3G and LTE huge? Other than the larger screen is there really anything major in terms of speed and reliability that makes it a good phone?

Note: I'm not an Apple person, I've been this way ever since the old Mac people would annoy the hell out of me during the PC years. I'm unable to convince her to drop Apple and switch over to a different ecosystem. If you tell me to drop the Iphone for an Android or WP7/8, I'll agree with you but that's as far as that will go.

So I was up for a carrier subsidized upgrade from AT&T about two weeks ago. I looked at the Galaxy Note 2, the Galaxy S3, and the iPhone 5 and chose... the Nexus 4. But it's not out and it's not on AT&T. So I bought an iPhone 5 which I will flip on Ebay in about two weeks when I get my Nexus 4 because it seemed to have a better resale value than the Note II or the SGS3. I upgraded from an iPhone 4 which I sold on Ebay three days ago for almost exactly what the iPhone 5 cost me (including Ebay fees, but not including the AT&T $36 activation fee)

So the main advantages of the iPhone 5 vs. the iPhone 4: larger screen, better battery life, better camera - both still and video, faster CPU, voice guided navigation (4 doesn't do this), louder and clearer speaker, Siri, and "4G" (on AT&T) and LTE and it's thinner. On the flip side there's the lightning cable making any gizmos that you have that plug in in the old plug obsolete...

As to the question of whether this is worth it, that depends a lot on your lifestyle and your contract status. I think if you are eligible for an upgrade from your cell phone company, you can sell the old iPhone 4 for most of what the upgrade fee is via Amazon, Gazelle.com, or Ebay in which case, the upgrade is more or less free and in this case, to me, it's absolutely worth it. If you can't get a carrier subsidized upgrade, then, no, in my opinion, it's not worth the ~$600 that AT&T/Verizon/Sprint will want to charge you for it. It's a nice improved phone, but it's not worth it in my opinion.

Do it. It's a significant speed upgrade. Not just network-wise, but processing-wise. Everything you do on the device will be quicker, even simple things like opening the SMS app. The best way I can describe it is that when I had an i4, it felt like the network was waiting on the phone. With the iPhone 5, it feels like the phone is waiting on the network.

As for usage on LTE, it's going to take a significant change on her part to suck up more data. I went from an unlimited plan to a tiered plan and I was worried about it at first, but with the iPhone 4, I used about 1GB every 15 days. Now, I'm about 1GB every 12 or so. It's a little bit more, but I haven't significantly changed my usage and I don't believe most people will.

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i have an ip4 (not the S) and my wife has the ip5 and we're on verizon.

using the net on her phone is SIGNIFICANTLY faster than on mine. i literally feel like i don't have to wait at all when using the net on her phone. it's also noticeably faster (CPU wise) even for every day things like opening up emails, camera, photos, etc.

i'm going to upgrade to the 5 any day too i've just been lazy about it.

and i won't lie - siri is pretty cool and i've actually used it a couple times when it came in handy, like asking it where the closest restaurant of a specific type was to our current location, as well as the NFL schedule for the redskins to see what time the next game is. sure i could have done all this with an internet search, but it made it a lot easier to do.

The iPhone 5 is a humungous upgrade over the iPhone 4. As mentioned, the hardware itself is a huge upgrade. The CPU is something like 4X the speed, plus there's the bigger screen, LTE, and a bunch of other stuff.

If she's fine with the iPhone 4. Save your money and wait until she's ready to upgrade. By then Apple might have released the next version of the iPhone. She's pretty much guaranteed iOS updates for the next 1-2 years and though the phone will start feeling sluggish if she's ok then like I said no reason to upgrade just to upgrade. Some people have the feeling like they need to upgrade every two years or even every year, but if your girlfriend is the type of person who doesn't then save your money and wait. The best way to stay future proofed is to save your money and buy later.

If she's fine with the iPhone 4. Save your money and wait until she's ready to upgrade. By then Apple might have released the next version of the iPhone. She's pretty much guaranteed iOS updates for the next 1-2 years and though the phone will start feeling sluggish if she's ok then like I said no reason to upgrade just to upgrade. Some people have the feeling like they need to upgrade every two years or even every year, but if your girlfriend is the type of person who doesn't then save your money and wait. The best way to stay future proofed is to save your money and buy later.

My thoughts exactly. My wife has the iPhone 5, but that is cause we switched carriers and she had to get a new one anyway. She was perfectly happy with the performance of the 4. Of course the iPhone 5 is faster, but is she gaming, or using apps that require heavy CPU usage? Most likely she is probably using the browser and some normal apps that she won't even notice.

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It's a viable choice, of course. The problem is that a lot of people don't realize what they're missing until they use it.

I bought my wife a used 4S instead of a new 5. She remakred it was considerably faster than her 4, even though she was perfectly happy with the 4, she still noticed a difference day-to-day after she started using it. And she doesn't do anything other than web browsing, text messaging, and some very basic apps like a calorie tracker. It still made a difference.

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My thoughts exactly. My wife has the iPhone 5, but that is cause we switched carriers and she had to get a new one anyway. She was perfectly happy with the performance of the 4. Of course the iPhone 5 is faster, but is she gaming, or using apps that require heavy CPU usage? Most likely she is probably using the browser and some normal apps that she won't even notice.

Browsing on the iPhone 5 is way faster than on the iPhone 4, even over WiFi.

Thank you all for your help on this. We share a family plan on AT&T. Her phone does have the unlimited "Iphone data" plan attached to it as I guess I can't share data with my non-iphone. Both of us are able to get upgrades so I can get the contract rate for them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mopetar

Just get her the iPhone which is what she wants. It's honestly not even worth arguing with her about it. Even if you win, you'll still lose.

I'm not even sure why you posted since it's pretty obvious what you should do.

I know, I just like to still pretend I get to have a say in it as the one that pays for it. I just need to maintain my stance of dominance....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Strk

LTE is awesome, but plans tend to suck. Is she on an unlimited plan?

She is on a unlimited plan currently for data, which does bring up a good question, will she have to move to a "LTE" plan?

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChAoTiCpInOy

If she's fine with the iPhone 4. Save your money and wait until she's ready to upgrade. By then Apple might have released the next version of the iPhone. She's pretty much guaranteed iOS updates for the next 1-2 years and though the phone will start feeling sluggish if she's ok then like I said no reason to upgrade just to upgrade. Some people have the feeling like they need to upgrade every two years or even every year, but if your girlfriend is the type of person who doesn't then save your money and wait. The best way to stay future proofed is to save your money and buy later.

She hasn't so much announced she wants a new phone, she has complained that it's slow of late. Some of that has to do with her attempting to do a lot of stuff with it while she's at remote sites for work. As I said, we both have been able to upgrade for a while now, we don't normally chase after phone tech. I'm just trying to do that nice, make her life a bit easier/nicer thing.

She is on a unlimited plan currently for data, which does bring up a good question, will she have to move to a "LTE" plan?

Yes, AT&T will move you to an unlimited LTE data plan.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skel

She hasn't so much announced she wants a new phone, she has complained that it's slow of late. Some of that has to do with her attempting to do a lot of stuff with it while she's at remote sites for work. As I said, we both have been able to upgrade for a while now, we don't normally chase after phone tech. I'm just trying to do that nice, make her life a bit easier/nicer thing.

She would notice the speed improvements. If you both can upgrade then why not. You can flip the iPhone 4's for a good price too if you wanted.

However, I think this is pretty indicative of Apple's focus on iOS smoothness. iOS 6 even on an iPhone 4 is generally (but not always) pretty smooth. However, you can can actually watch the page render on complex desktop-oriented web pages. It's not near-instantaneous like on other phones.

To put it another way, there are much faster browsing phones out there which still have significant OS lag, because they're running older versions of Android. A single core iPhone 4 running iOS 5 is actually less stuttery for the most part than a dual-core Android phone running an old version of Android, but dual-core phone with an up-to-date browser will likely browse faster than the iPhone 4.

Thank you all for your help on this. We share a family plan on AT&T. Her phone does have the unlimited "Iphone data" plan attached to it as I guess I can't share data with my non-iphone. Both of us are able to get upgrades so I can get the contract rate for them.

I know, I just like to still pretend I get to have a say in it as the one that pays for it. I just need to maintain my stance of dominance....

She is on a unlimited plan currently for data, which does bring up a good question, will she have to move to a "LTE" plan?

She hasn't so much announced she wants a new phone, she has complained that it's slow of late. Some of that has to do with her attempting to do a lot of stuff with it while she's at remote sites for work. As I said, we both have been able to upgrade for a while now, we don't normally chase after phone tech. I'm just trying to do that nice, make her life a bit easier/nicer thing.

She can keep it if she is on at&t (it gets throttled at 5gb, I think), but Verizon will make you go to a tiered plan if you get a subsidized LTE phone. If you're on at&t, I'd just make sure you go into a store for the upgrade.